Les Miserables and Other Works and Their Themes

¶ … religious themes of the three works mentioned, those being Les Miserables, Notes on Nursing and the Calling of Katie Makanya, are all fairly easy to see. A major fact about Les Miserables is that Jean Valjean spends a lot of time in jail for doing something relatively minor, stealing food to feed a starving family, and then this gets compounded three to four times over when Valjean tries to escape. In all, Valjean is in prison for nineteen years before being released.

He is then treated like a leper by innkeepers because of his convict past. As the story progresses, there are some obvious themes relating to the law, the enforcement thereof and grace. There is a common theme from Valjean needing to be forgiven and allowed to gain redemption despite the past at hand but there is a common theme of people not doing that in the book. Javert's assertion that criminals never change and that breaking the law should be met with zero tolerance.

Despite Valjean trying to escape his past, many in that era and that book hold that it is not that easy. The obvious point, or at least one of them, from Les Miserables is that Valjean was not treated fairly and even his original sin did not warrant the behavior and jailing he received even if what he did was technically against the law. The zero tolerance nature of his punishment was over the top.

Notes on Nursing speaks about religion in a way that bucks the trend of how nurses were perceived at the time and how they should do their job. Nightingale made references at differnet points about doing one's job even when the maddening din of events around a nurse demand or require otherwise and how doing's on job with Christian love should always win out. Lastly, Maknya said something similar of a black woman being resolute and committed to doing the Godly thing even when treated like dirt.

Katie even accepted the ideals of marriage, Christianity and so forth of the dominating European culture. Question Two Industrialization was certainly a game-changer for Britain and the world. Indeed, Britain controlled much of the world when industrialization came to pass. The impacts on things like economics, politics, arts, ideas and culture were all quite easy to see and imagine. For example, economics would be impacted by industrialization in the form of being able to produce more goods for domestic and trading purposes.

With such a wide-ranging empire, the ability to better and more quickly supply all the British areas of control would be important. For politics, much the same implications would be necessary as a more completely supplied empire would be a happier empire and thus make it easier to manage and control. If areas are not supplied and set up properly, this would lead to unrest and vitriol. This eventually happened anyway, but the industrialization of the areas probably at least delayed it.

As far as religion goes, one could point to industrialization being a message and gift from God that helps feed, clothes and otherwise help the masses that live in the different British areas and colonies. The arts would reflect the industrialization of the British areas through the pictures and images that show the factories, the people working in their shops and workstations and people trading goods that were made or generated through industrialization. Ideas would be further generated to use and further take advantage of industrialization.

The culture would change as the lesser amount of time needed to make things and products would lead to time being freed up for other endeavors. Question Three The role and outcomes for women in Les Miserables is an easy pathway to follow. The modern parallels with the plight of migrant workers and how it so often ends up with the migrant workers engaging in the sex trade (like what is seen with Fantine, etc.) still happens to this very day.

Many women in urban areas and those women from foreign countries in general often turn to the sex trade because it is one of the few (perhaps the only) way they have or see as a way to survive giving the massive challenges that follow them. This could even be held true in the United States to a lesser degree but it is pervasive in other areas of the world like Africa and Southeast Asia.

With Notes on Nursing and Katie Makanya, women being placed in horrible or at least stressful situations and still asked to perform and meet a certain standard either by the standards of that day or the internal standards that they refuse to diverge from is impossible to ignore. Nightingale's words about doing no harm and remaining resolved and committed despite what is going on around them and the pressures they face from others is unmistakable.

Much the same thing is sen by Makanya when you see a woman who is living through a disgusting movement (Apartheid) despite what is going on. Indeed, it is specifically noted with Makanya that she is hestitant to work under such a movement such as with Dr. James McCord. However, despite this she commits to helping those African patients and thus she decides to push ahead and do what she felt was the right thing.

It is no accident that the work of Makanya was not published until after Apartheid was over or that it was immediately recognized as a stellar and prominent work. Question Four Regarding the facets and conditions that typify the "ideal" society in a Western culture, there are a few. Of course, the "ideal" Western culture of the late 19th century would be typified by earlier American (post Civil-War) and Europe at around the same time. There are two.